After seeing the two promoted teams relegated from the Wray & Nephew Jamaica Premier League for the second season in a row, Professional Football Jamaica Limited (PFJL) Chairman Chris Williams maintains his stance that a 14-team league is too much.

The league’s top flight was traditionally contested by 12 teams but was expanded to 14 teams for the 2022-23 season. Faulkland FC of St James and Chapelton Maroons were promoted to the Jamaica Football Federation’s’s Tier 2 competition but were both demoted, weeks before the completion of the season.

It’s a similar story for the ongoing 2023-24 season with the two newcomers, St Elizabeth’s Treasure Beach FC and St Ann’s Lime Hall Academy, both getting relegated with games to play before the end of the regular season. They also have the worst defensive records, conceding over 110 goals combined and have scored less than 20 goals.

Williams, though, doesn’t expect a change any time soon because it is beneficial for the other 12 clubs participating.

“You can’t convince the clubs; you think the clubs are idiots?” Right now the clubs are safe because it’s 14 teams and every year two teams come up and they’re like bait, they just shoot them down by halfway the season so it’s not driving the kind of day-to-day intensity and panic to say, ‘Yo, mi have to win this game because if I don’t, mi get drop (relegated)’,” he told the Jamaica Observer recently.

“It has to be a decision by the regulators. It can’t be a decision by the people themselves because the people themselves are going to say, ‘Hell no’, which is what they did and voted me down because they said, ‘Mi nah go take the chance and mi get drop.’”

Williams, who has served as PFJL chairman since 2020, says a reduction in the number of teams will only make the league better in a number of ways.

“If you want to force people to triple their game, you put the fear of God under them that they may get the drop,” he said. “I wanted 10 [teams] but I [can] live with 12 because I’m telling you, if we do that, the level of ball will double in quality. Just that simple move, now man have to win every game, every game matters, every game is like a final.

“That will just drive the commercialisation more and we’ll be able to give them more because it’s less teams and so on, so the sponsorship dollar would be spread amongst fewer. So, they would be even more profitable and it would help the leagues below because now you’d have quality teams dropping down. So, when they drop down, they’re going to maintain the same level of energy because they want to get back up.”

However, Williams, Proven Group’s chief executive officer, is adamant that the 14-team structure won’t prevent the PFJL from raising the standard of football on the island.

“The gap is too wide between Tier 2 and Tier 1 so there is no real fear for teams, and so you get a little bit of complacency and that’s not good,” he said. “But they’re not going to make that decision, they’re going to vote against the chairman which they have done because them a say ‘Chairman alright, Chairman work at Proven so him not really worrying about it’.

“[But] mi nah mek that stop mi. We’re going to press same way, I won’t make the difference between 14 and 12 stop the focus. Ideally, I’d want that but I won’t let that stop me, the growth is still going to happen,” Williams said.